Newhall Ranch: a Local Problem

Don’t look now, but just across the county line our neighbor the 800-pound gorilla is getting ready to sit wherever it wants.

Los Angeles County is set to approve the Newhall Ranch development in the Santa Clara River Valley, virtually ignoring the impacts on Ventura County.

The development of Newhall Ranch will take place five miles east of Piru. It’s far from where most of us live, construction won’t even begin for several years and most of us hardly ever go out there. So why should we care?

Because Newhall Ranch, the biggest development ever proposed for Los Angeles County, is also the biggest single threat to Ventura County--not just in itself but because it would alter the development environment around and within Ventura County.

If built, the 12,000-acre, 24,000-unit, 68,000-person development, will set in motion a process that will change Ventura County from the substantially rural and agricultural county it still is to a San Fernando Valley of a county, a giant suburb with wall-to-wall housing developments and shopping malls and no center.

This is so not only because Newhall Ranch will by itself bring development pressure on Ventura County’s portion of the Santa Clara River Valley, but also because its developer, Newhall Land and Farming, is holding another 15,000-plus acres for development in Ventura County.

With or without Newhall Ranch, change is coming to Ventura County. We will inevitably experience population growth and become more urban/suburban and less rural/agricultural. However, we are entitled to a say in how the development pressures are channeled in our county, and we aren’t currently getting that say.

That is why Ventura County residents should insist that our supervisors make sure our interests are defended now, before it’s too late.

What is wrong with Newhall Ranch? Two things:

First, there is a host of serious, unacknowledged and unmitigated impacts on Ventura County. They range from air pollution, threats to the riparian habitat and flood plain of the last unchanneled river in Southern California to threats to our water supply, increased traffic congestion, growth inducement on Santa Clara River Valley communities from Piru to Ventura and increased danger of flooding. Other impacts include a radical change to the economics of land and agriculture in the Santa Clara River Valley and a threat to Ventura County’s agricultural base. Until these and other impacts are acknowledged by the developer and Los Angeles County and real mitigation offered, Ventura County residents have plenty of reason to be concerned about Newhall Ranch no matter what their underlying feelings about development. (For information on these specific impacts, contact Friends of the Santa Clara River at (805) 498-4323.)

Second, Newhall Ranch poses a threat to Ventura County’s culture. We do have a culture in Ventura County, and it’s markedly different from Los Angeles County’s. To take just the political culture, L.A. County supervisors each represent 2 million people; Ventura County supervisors each represent 143,000. The difference in accessibility and responsiveness cannot be overstated. As in political culture, so in other aspects of life: the possibility of community, proximity to a rural or natural environment, and so forth. Over time, destruction of this culture is the biggest threat posed by the development of Newhall Ranch and by the further development it will make inevitable.

Ventura County is not exempt from the forces of change, but it is entitled to be included in determining what will change, when it will change and what it changes to. So far, none of the decisions about Newhall Ranch have allowed for that.